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The unfortunate former president of Brandeis University…

… you will recall, threatened to sue Harper’s Magazine over an article about the university’s notorious budget problems. Cooler heads – i.e., students – prevailed, and the suit (Joshua Reinharz darkly suggested that “that the article’s author, Christopher R. Beha, was motivated to write an article casting Brandeis’ finances in a negative light because his aunt Ann Beha’s architectural firm was rejected by the University in its bid for a 2004 building project.”) never happened.

But universities continue to make this sort of mistake, with Canada’s York the latest example. Again a university has taken umbrage at a magazine article – in this case, an article which called the campus “a hunting ground for sexual predators.”

That’s strong language, to be sure, but I suspect “literary license” covers it, and, in any case, a lawsuit costs a lot of money and will ultimately be a high-profile way of keeping the issue of campus safety in the news.

Margaret Soltan, October 11, 2013 10:06AM
Posted in: the university

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UD REVIEWED

Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times

George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
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It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo

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truffula, commenting at Historiann

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Dagblog

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Dissent: The Blog

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Perplexed with Narrow Passages

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